When it comes to investing in clean tech it helps to have a have a tightly cinched seat belt says Josh Green, a partner in the investment firm Mohr Davidow Ventures.

Menlo Park, California-based Green was in Denver recently to deliver a keynote address to the Colorado Cleantech Industries Association and took a few minutes to offer some thoughts on where the sector is heading.

And it all starts with the roller coaster know as the “hype curve” developed by the Gartner Goup.

“You climb to the peak of inflated expectations and descend into the trough of disillusionment,” Green said. “That’s where we are in a lot of ways.”

But that should lead Green said to a “more realistic, more somber assessment and with that realistic optimism.”

Some areas, such as solar panel production have taken a pounding in the last year and a half as the prices for solar cells plummeted 70 percent under a flood of below-cost Chinese silicon module imports.

Panel maker Solyndra went bankrupt and wiping out $1 billion in investor money. Loveland, Colorado-based Abound Solar followed the same path with a loss of about $350 million in venture financing.

Both companies also receive federal loan guarantees that left taxpayers on the hook for $535 million at Solyndra and up to $60 million at Abound.

Green said that investing opportunities in the sector remain, such as SolarCity, a company specializing in leasing and installing solar arrays for homes, businesses and government installations. “Those guys are going crazy,” Green said. Among SolarCity’s partners is Google, which helped back a $280 million fund to finance residential solar projects.

In October California-based SolarCity filed for a proposed initial public stock offering of about $200 million.

Green said that he believes that even panel makers such as MiaSole and First Solar are “dusting themselves off and coming out with new products that will be cheaper than the Chinese silicon.”

Another area with opportunities is biofuels – one of Morh Davidow’s investments is Lakewood, Colorado-based ZeaChem, which has a process to make cellulosic ethanol.

The company just completed raising $25 million in Series C investment, with money coming from Japan-based ITOCHU Corporation, a multinational trading company, and Macquarie, a global investment banking and financial services group based in Sydney.

But Green cautions there are 100 biofuels companies trying to make the same product. “We had the same thing in biotech with 100 companies that were going to cure cancer,” he said.

Still, some one is going to win. “Oil is just too expensive,” Green said.

Fields like solar and biofuels are a little more mature and new money is always flowing into the next new thing – most recently social media, Green said.

“One in ten investments is a true home run,” Green said. “I’ve been in silicon Valley 30 years and the truth is progress has been inch-by-inch, more than mile-by-mile.”

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Emilie Rusch covers retail and commercial real estate for The Post. A Wisconsin native and Mizzou graduate, she moved to Colorado in 2012. Before that, she worked at a small daily newspaper in South Dakota. It's the one with Mount Rushmore.